Click to see the news article,
published in
The Sun, Thursday, September 16th 2006.
Board Nicks name
A Sixth-generation Tweed man says bureaucrats have made a big
mistake in deciding to add Wollumbin to the name of Mt Warning.
James McKenzie is annoyed the NSW Geographical Names Board took the
name Wollumbin away from a mountain on his land without consulting
him.
Elders of the Ngarakwal/Githabal tribe are also up in arms over the
change to Mt Warning/Wollumbin.
Their spokeswoman, Stella Wheildon, told a Murwillumbah Chamber of
Commerce meeting last week that Mt Wollumbin, which lies slightly to
the west of Mt Warning, was gazetted a long time ago. "That gazettal
was rescinded in June last year," she said, "and the name
'Wollumbin' was reassigned to Mt Warning in January."
There appears to be no explanation for the change in title or status
for the peak.
Ms Wheildon said some of the information given to the names board by
some local organisations was incorrect.
She said some people involved in the Aboriginal governance were not
traditionally from the Tweed, but were making decisions for
Aborigines who had ancestral links to the area.
Mr McKenzie said his ancestor James McKenzie settled in the Tweed in
the 1870s.
He said James McKenzie had an enduring link with the land as well as
its first inhabitants, the Ngarakwal/Nganduwals.
"The claim that Mt Warning is the fighting chief Wollumbin is
nonsense," said Mr McKenzie, a past chairman of the Tweed and
Coolangatta Tourist association.
"They have blatantly stolen the gazetted name of my family's
mountain, Mt Wollumbin, and the cultural significance of it to the
Ngarakwal/Githabal people, and have wrongly regazetted it to the
peak known as Mt Warning.
Mr McKenzie said both his grandfather and father had told him many
times that the mountain on his property was known as the head of the
fighting chief by the tribes living on the Tweed.
A second mountain, known locally as Three Top, was the fighting
chief's body, he said.
A spokesman for the NSW Lands Department said the Geographical Names
Board consulted stakeholders, cultural experts, Aboriginal groups
and the general community over the proposal to apply the dual name
Mt Warning/Wollumbin and, the board concluded there was overwhelming
evidence to support the dual name Wollumbin being applied to Mt
Warning.
"The board has been contacted by Mr McKenzie and, while it believes
the decision is correct, it has agreed to conduct further research
into the matter." he said.
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